[Gllug] spam

[Jason Clifford]

On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 20:58 +0100, Diana Scott wrote:
> I have been receiving 10 - 15 spam email every day since early June
> this year. I was shocked to find out some of the regular spam have my
> email address as the sending address but in a different sender name
> sending it back to my email account. When it arrives, the sender
> appeared as "Me". Do you know how the spammers find my email address
> and how do they fake the sender id as ME sending it back to the
> original address  ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job

> What do they gain by sending these spam email ? 

There are a number of reasons they send spam. The primary one is to make
money from the idiots who reply to it one way and another. Another
reason is to poison anti-spam systems so as to reduce their
effectiveness in blocking spam.

> What do I need to do
> to get my email address off from the spammers mailing lists or stop
> receiving from them ? Can "Report to phishing" stop them spamming?

Absolutely nothing. Don't waste your time worrying about it. Simply
employ whatever anti-spam filtering is available to you and learn not to
open or reply to messages that are suspicious.

> Are there any government agencies that help to control email spamming
> in the UK ? Are they breaking any law by sending fake id spamming ?

No and neither can there be. The idea that the government or any one
else could have such powers is at odds with the reality of the Internet
as an open environment in which anyone can publish.

Jason

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